At Cæsarea soon the Sanhedrim,By deputy and advocate, appearedBefore the bar of Felix governor,To implead the prisoner Paul.The high-priest broughtThe weight and dignity of rulershipSupreme among his people, to impressOn Felix fitting sense of the grave causeNow come before him to be judged. Thin veiledBeneath the decent fair exterior showOf only public and judicial aimAnd motive in that ruler of the Jews(The high-priest Ananias), deep there wroughtA leaven of personal vindictivenessTwofold, sullen resentment of affront,And, added, that least placable, that worstHatred, the hatred toward a brother wronged.Whom he, from his own judgment-seat—profanedThus by his profanation of the law—Had wantonly commanded to be smittenUpon the mouth, this outraged man must nowBe proved, forsooth, a wretch unmeet to live.But Shimei, as prime mover, was left, too,To be prime manager, of all. Far lessFestive, than his old wont, in exerciseOf that exhaustless wit his own in wile,Serious he now, yea even to sadness, seemed.And reason was. For Claudius LysiasHad summoned him to presence in the fort;And there, hap not to have been imagined, he,Besides the haughty Roman chief, had metAnother face more welcome scarce than his.Young Stephen's purpose, not revealed, had beenTo move some action against Shimei.This gentle Hebrew youth inheritedLarge measure of the wilful spirit highThat in the blood of all his kindred ran.Of his own motion he, without advice,Nay, headstrong, in the teeth of thwart advice,Which, though he sought it not, he full well feltIn current counter to his wish—self-movedThus, and self-willed, Paul's nephew had resolvedTo try what might to him be possible—By putting in the place of the accusedInstead of the accuser's, that base man,His uncle's foe—to free his uncle's state,Once and for all, from danger and annoyDue to the restless hate of Shimei.The friendly chiliarch was his first resort.In one swift glance, which more was of the mindItself, perceiving as it were withoutOrgan, than of the eye with which it saw,Stephen that night, upon the point of timeWhen Shimei was arrested and brought in,A glimpse had caught of two receding formsOf men upon the street, flying as seemed;Whom instantly he knew to be the sameWith that pair of conspirators to slay,Whose whispers had revealed their plot to him:These were the stout young fellows Shimei setTo lie in wait for the escaping Paul.The moment they beheld their master seized,They quickly had betaken them to flight;But Stephen's mind flew faster than their feet,And with intangible tether had them bound.This his new observation of the twainMade him secure of recognizing themWhenever or wherever seen again.With so much clue as this, no more, in hand,To guide him in the quest of testimonyThat might his crimes bring home to Shimei—Supposed still safe in keeping at the fort—Stephen his audience with the chiliarch sought.The bright hope that he brought in coming, sprungFrom grateful recollection of the graceHe found, that morning, in the Roman's eyes,Was promptly damped to deep dejection now.The chiliarch met him with a cold and sourSeverity of aspect that repelled,Beyond the youth's capacity—unbuoyed,For this occasion, with approving senseOf well-advised attempt at least, if vain—To front it with unruffled brow. AbashedHe stood, confused; the blood rushed to his face;His tongue clung to his mouth's roof; and in allHe less looked like that youthful innocenceWhich won the Roman so in his soft mood,Than like the conscious guilt, uncovered now,In Shimei's slant insinuation shown.The chiliarch by reaction was relapsedInto his sternest temper of disdainEmbittered by suspicious cynicism;Apt sequel of the interview prolongedWith Shimei, and the final passionateEjection of that Hebrew from the fort.He now awaiting Shimei, summoned backOnce more, to be to Cæsarea sent,Here was that Stephen—despicable heToo, doubtless, like his despicable race!Such was the prompt involuntary set,Inhospitable, of the chiliarch's thought,For welcome of the youth before him there.To Stephen's stammering words about those men,And how they might be made to testifyOf Shimei's desperate plot to murder Paul,Thus bringing Shimei to deservéd doom,The Roman tartly said: "Aye, aye, young sir,I think it like, seems altogether like.You Jews could, all of you, I doubt not, swearOf one another, brethren as ye be,Things damnable enough to crucifyYe all, and, what is more, for just that once,Swear true! But thanks, lad, I have had my fillAt present of these proffered services."The manner was dismissory, more evenThan were the words, and Stephen bowed to go.But his own manner in thus bowing changed,Although he spoke not, to such dignity,Recovered from his discomposure late,So instantly recovered, and so pure—Adulterate in no trace with hardihood—A dignity comportable with youth,While eloquent of virtue and high mind,And, like a robe, so beautifully wornOver a person and a gesture fair,That Claudius Lysias, cynic as he wasThat moment, seeing could not but admire.He, on the point to bid the youth remain,Wavering, not quite persuaded,—at the door,Bowing his different bow, stood Shimei;That sight and contrast fixed his wavering mind."Stay thou, my lad," abruptly he exclaimed—Wherewith another fall the countenance fellOf Shimei, cringing, to his footsteps glued."Look ye on one another, ye two Jews,"The chiliarch in a sudden humor said;"I have a fancy I should like to seeHow two reciprocal accusers suchAs you are, rogues both—though one young, one old,In roguery—if your mutual witness hold—I say, the fancy takes me to observeHow two accusers of each other, likeYourselves, confronted in close quarters thus,Will severally enjoy each other's stare."An indescribable something in the toneOf Claudius Lysias speaking thus, or lookPerhaps, couched in the eye or on the facePlaying, signified clear to ShimeiThat the same words were differently meantTo Stephen and to him; spoken to himIn earnest, in but pleasantry to Stephen.Stephen's high air, in proud sense of his worthWronged by misdoubt, had Shimei led astray.He saw it as a sign of prosperous suit—Doubtless against himself—just finished there.Already tuned to fear, his conscious mind,Quite disconcerted by this fresh surpriseOf some detection that he could not guess,Suddenly wrote abroad on all his mienA patent full conviction of himself.As more and more his heart misgave him, worseEver and worse his brow was discomposed.The lively opposite of Shimei's changeWas meantime making Stephen's face more fair.He, at the chiliarch's mating of himselfWith Shimei, though in veriest raillery meant,Felt all the soul of manliness in himStung to its most resistant; as he turned,Obedient to the chiliarch's word, and lookedAt Shimei, such transfigurement there passedUpon him that he stood there glorified.An infinite repellence seemed to rayFrom out his eyes, and put impassableRemove between him and that other, whileAscendance, as peculiar to a raceAnd rank of being wholly different,Endued him, like a natural right to reign.Such kingly to such servile seen opposed,Surprised the chiliarch into altered mood."Enough," said he; and, writing while those stayed,He gave to Shimei what he wrote to read.It was a letter Shimei should himselfConvey to Felix governor; it ran:"Who brings this is a rascal, as I judge;He comes to accuse the Jewish prisoner Paul.Detain him, if thee please, to see the end;The end should be perhaps a cross forhim!"Wincing, the miscreant read; he, reading, feltDraw, from Rome's hand, the coil about his neck.Choking for speech, he, ere he found it, heardThe chiliarch say, with voice hard like a flint:"Thou hast thine errand; tarry not, but go.Nay, bide a moment; let the youngster seeWhat message I have given thee to bear;Then, if so chance thou lose it on the way,He can supply thy lack of carefulness!"His air that of the miser who, compelled,Gives up gold hoarded, like his own heart's blood,Shimei, with griping pangs, in sick recoilOf grudging overmastered to submit,Yielded, as if he were withholding it,The hateful letter into Stephen's hand.Stephen, as one not daring otherwise,Deigned a reluctant look, that, seeking not,Yet seized, the sense of that which Shimei showed;Softened, he gave the parchment back to him.Prodded with such oblique sarcastic spurTo heed of sinister commission such,Shimei withdrew, a miserable man.The chiliarch then to Stephen—who, at oncePity of Shimei's utter wretchedness,Shame of his utter abjectness, conceived—Said, with changed tone: "My lad, I think thee true;That miscreant vexed me into petulance.Thou hast not altogether missed thy markIn coming hither now, although I thusSeem to let Shimei for the present slip.Follow him, if thou wilt, to Cæsarea.With letter of Bellerophon in charge,He carries his own sentence thither hence;Watch it—if slow in execution, sure!"Sobered by triumph, and not triumphing,Made pensive rather, Stephen went away.Forth from the hour when Shimei, so dismissed,Shrank out of presence at AntoniaCollapsed in spirit as in mien and port,He to the end was seen an altered man.Dejected, absent, like a criminalConvicted of his crime, sentenced to die,Though day of death unfixed, imprisoned not,Nay, moving, as if free, about the world,To view not different from his fellow-men,Yet with a sense forever haunting himOf doom uncertainly suspended stillAbove him, that at any moment mightIn avalanche descend upon his head—So he lived joyless, the elastic springBroken that buoyed him to his wickedness.But loth he had to Cæsarea gone,Where, with wry looks and deprecation vain,He gave the letter to the governor;Had he, to ease his case, dared fail the trust,The failure would have failed his case to ease,Nay, rather, would have harder made his case,Since Stephen could report what he did not,And could besides report his negligence.But Shimei dared not fail; he knew offence,Added, of disobedience, would but drawSpeedier the dreaded danger ruining down.Joy is to some a spring of energy,Which failing, all their force for action fails—They having in themselves no virtue proofAgainst the palsying touch ill fortune brings;Of such was Shimei. In his broken state,His measures he took feebly, without hope.The wish—which with the expectation joinedWould have made hope—yea, even the very wish,That life and strength of hope, was well-nigh deadIn him; for he no longer now desiredThe thing he wrought for still, under constraintOf habit, and that strange necessityWhich sense of many eyes upon him fixedTo watch him working the familiar wontOf Shimei, bred within this wretched man,Forcing him like a fate.Fit tool he foundIn one Tertullus—hireling Roman tongue,Or function mere, not organ—who, for price,Spoke customary things accusing PaulTo Felix, for the Jews; these joined their voiceIn sanction of the truth of what he said.But Paul denying their base charges all,Denying and defying to the proof,The governor postponed them for a time.Paul he remanded into custody,But bade with courteous ways distinguish him;Whereof the secret cause was, not a senseIn Felix of the righteousness of Paul,With therefore sweet magnanimous desireTo grace him what in loyalty he could—Of no such height was Felix capable—The cause none other was than Shimei;Who Paul however served not, but himself.For Shimei dreaded what he seemed to seek,The sentence "Guilty," at the judgment-barOf Felix on this prisoner Paul pronounced;Dreaded it, lest appeal therefrom be claimedBy Paul to the imperial ear at Rome.He himself, Shimei, then might be compelledTo go likewise the same unwelcome way,Though witness and accuser only named,Yet labelled target for suspicious eyes,Where eyes suspicious oft portended doom.So he to Felix—less with words than signs,Mysterious looks and reticences deep,As of a man who could, if but he would,And were it wise, tell much that, left untold,Might well be guessed from things kept back, yet thus,And thus, and thus (in Shimei's pantomime)Winked with the eye and with the shoulder shrugged—Hint signalled that there hid a gold mine here,For who, with power like his, conjoined the skillTo make it yield its treasure to demand;This Paul had wealthy friends who gladly wouldBuy at large price indulgences for him.Let Felix hold out hopes, deferring still,Suffer his friends to come and visit Paul,Give hearings to his case, but naught decide,Weary him out, and them, with long delays—Till a realm's ransom woo his clutch at last.Now Shimei thus consummately contrived;For Felix was a mercenary soul,Who governed in the spirit of a slave.He, therefore, doubting not that Shimei(Confessed the player of a double part,Pander to him, accuser for the Jews)Was all the rascal that the chiliarch guessed,Yet deemed he saw his profit in the man.He could use Shimei to his own behoof,In winning what he coveted from Paul;Meantime remitting not his hold on himFor final expiation of his crimes.The two, well fitted to each other, thusPlayed each his several sordid game with each,And neither by the other was deceived,Both equally incapable of trust,As equally unworthy to be trusted—Until, two years accomplished, Felix fellFrom power at Cæsarea; when, his greedLong disappointed of its glut of gainFrom Paul, he left him there in prison. He hopedThe dreaded accusation of the JewsFor his abuse of power, surpassing bound,Might less fierce follow him to Rome, should he,By that injustice added, in their eyesHis thousands of injustices atone.Moreover Felix hated Paul, as hatesThe upbraided ever his upbraider, when,The conscience yielding, yet the will withstands.For, during the imprisonment of Paul,And that prolonged delay of trial dueHim, this base freedman—basely raised to beA ruler—as a pleasure to his wife,Devised a feast of eloquence for her.She was a Jewess, beautiful as vile,And as in beauty brilliant, so in wit;She would enjoy it, like a spectacle,To sit, in emulated state, a queenBeside her husband in his judgment-hall,And there, at ease reclined, her lord's delight,In her resplendent and voluptuous bloom,Disport herself at leisure, eye and earTasting their satisfaction to the full,To see and hear her famous countrymanExpound his doctrine and defend his cause.Not often, in his rude Judæan seatOf government in banishment, could heProffer the stately partner of his throneAn equal hope of entertainment rare.So, royal in their pomp of progress, came,One day, the lustful Felix with his bride,Adulterous Drusilla, guilty pair!And, on his throne of judgment seating him,Bade Paul before them, in his prisoner's chain,To burn the splendors of his oratoryIn pleading for the faith of Jesus Christ—Fresh pastime to the cloyed and jaded senseFor pleasure those voluptuaries brought!Uncalculated thrills, not of delight,That lawless Roman ruler had purveyedHimself, to chase each other in their chillProcession through the currents of his blood,And, shuddering, shoot along his nerves, and freezeHis marrow!—conscience in him her last signMaking perhaps that day.But will he heed?Or will the terrors of the world to comeVainly appal him with the eternal fear?
At Cæsarea soon the Sanhedrim,By deputy and advocate, appearedBefore the bar of Felix governor,To implead the prisoner Paul.
The high-priest broughtThe weight and dignity of rulershipSupreme among his people, to impressOn Felix fitting sense of the grave causeNow come before him to be judged. Thin veiledBeneath the decent fair exterior showOf only public and judicial aimAnd motive in that ruler of the Jews(The high-priest Ananias), deep there wroughtA leaven of personal vindictivenessTwofold, sullen resentment of affront,And, added, that least placable, that worstHatred, the hatred toward a brother wronged.Whom he, from his own judgment-seat—profanedThus by his profanation of the law—Had wantonly commanded to be smittenUpon the mouth, this outraged man must nowBe proved, forsooth, a wretch unmeet to live.
But Shimei, as prime mover, was left, too,To be prime manager, of all. Far lessFestive, than his old wont, in exerciseOf that exhaustless wit his own in wile,Serious he now, yea even to sadness, seemed.
And reason was. For Claudius LysiasHad summoned him to presence in the fort;And there, hap not to have been imagined, he,Besides the haughty Roman chief, had metAnother face more welcome scarce than his.
Young Stephen's purpose, not revealed, had beenTo move some action against Shimei.This gentle Hebrew youth inheritedLarge measure of the wilful spirit highThat in the blood of all his kindred ran.Of his own motion he, without advice,Nay, headstrong, in the teeth of thwart advice,Which, though he sought it not, he full well feltIn current counter to his wish—self-movedThus, and self-willed, Paul's nephew had resolvedTo try what might to him be possible—By putting in the place of the accusedInstead of the accuser's, that base man,His uncle's foe—to free his uncle's state,Once and for all, from danger and annoyDue to the restless hate of Shimei.The friendly chiliarch was his first resort.
In one swift glance, which more was of the mindItself, perceiving as it were withoutOrgan, than of the eye with which it saw,Stephen that night, upon the point of timeWhen Shimei was arrested and brought in,A glimpse had caught of two receding formsOf men upon the street, flying as seemed;Whom instantly he knew to be the sameWith that pair of conspirators to slay,Whose whispers had revealed their plot to him:These were the stout young fellows Shimei setTo lie in wait for the escaping Paul.The moment they beheld their master seized,They quickly had betaken them to flight;But Stephen's mind flew faster than their feet,And with intangible tether had them bound.This his new observation of the twainMade him secure of recognizing themWhenever or wherever seen again.With so much clue as this, no more, in hand,To guide him in the quest of testimonyThat might his crimes bring home to Shimei—Supposed still safe in keeping at the fort—Stephen his audience with the chiliarch sought.
The bright hope that he brought in coming, sprungFrom grateful recollection of the graceHe found, that morning, in the Roman's eyes,Was promptly damped to deep dejection now.The chiliarch met him with a cold and sourSeverity of aspect that repelled,Beyond the youth's capacity—unbuoyed,For this occasion, with approving senseOf well-advised attempt at least, if vain—To front it with unruffled brow. AbashedHe stood, confused; the blood rushed to his face;His tongue clung to his mouth's roof; and in allHe less looked like that youthful innocenceWhich won the Roman so in his soft mood,Than like the conscious guilt, uncovered now,In Shimei's slant insinuation shown.The chiliarch by reaction was relapsedInto his sternest temper of disdainEmbittered by suspicious cynicism;Apt sequel of the interview prolongedWith Shimei, and the final passionateEjection of that Hebrew from the fort.He now awaiting Shimei, summoned backOnce more, to be to Cæsarea sent,Here was that Stephen—despicable heToo, doubtless, like his despicable race!Such was the prompt involuntary set,Inhospitable, of the chiliarch's thought,For welcome of the youth before him there.
To Stephen's stammering words about those men,And how they might be made to testifyOf Shimei's desperate plot to murder Paul,Thus bringing Shimei to deservéd doom,The Roman tartly said: "Aye, aye, young sir,I think it like, seems altogether like.You Jews could, all of you, I doubt not, swearOf one another, brethren as ye be,Things damnable enough to crucifyYe all, and, what is more, for just that once,Swear true! But thanks, lad, I have had my fillAt present of these proffered services."
The manner was dismissory, more evenThan were the words, and Stephen bowed to go.But his own manner in thus bowing changed,Although he spoke not, to such dignity,Recovered from his discomposure late,So instantly recovered, and so pure—Adulterate in no trace with hardihood—A dignity comportable with youth,While eloquent of virtue and high mind,And, like a robe, so beautifully wornOver a person and a gesture fair,That Claudius Lysias, cynic as he wasThat moment, seeing could not but admire.
He, on the point to bid the youth remain,Wavering, not quite persuaded,—at the door,Bowing his different bow, stood Shimei;That sight and contrast fixed his wavering mind."Stay thou, my lad," abruptly he exclaimed—Wherewith another fall the countenance fellOf Shimei, cringing, to his footsteps glued."Look ye on one another, ye two Jews,"The chiliarch in a sudden humor said;"I have a fancy I should like to seeHow two reciprocal accusers suchAs you are, rogues both—though one young, one old,In roguery—if your mutual witness hold—I say, the fancy takes me to observeHow two accusers of each other, likeYourselves, confronted in close quarters thus,Will severally enjoy each other's stare."
An indescribable something in the toneOf Claudius Lysias speaking thus, or lookPerhaps, couched in the eye or on the facePlaying, signified clear to ShimeiThat the same words were differently meantTo Stephen and to him; spoken to himIn earnest, in but pleasantry to Stephen.Stephen's high air, in proud sense of his worthWronged by misdoubt, had Shimei led astray.He saw it as a sign of prosperous suit—Doubtless against himself—just finished there.Already tuned to fear, his conscious mind,Quite disconcerted by this fresh surpriseOf some detection that he could not guess,Suddenly wrote abroad on all his mienA patent full conviction of himself.As more and more his heart misgave him, worseEver and worse his brow was discomposed.
The lively opposite of Shimei's changeWas meantime making Stephen's face more fair.He, at the chiliarch's mating of himselfWith Shimei, though in veriest raillery meant,Felt all the soul of manliness in himStung to its most resistant; as he turned,Obedient to the chiliarch's word, and lookedAt Shimei, such transfigurement there passedUpon him that he stood there glorified.An infinite repellence seemed to rayFrom out his eyes, and put impassableRemove between him and that other, whileAscendance, as peculiar to a raceAnd rank of being wholly different,Endued him, like a natural right to reign.Such kingly to such servile seen opposed,Surprised the chiliarch into altered mood."Enough," said he; and, writing while those stayed,He gave to Shimei what he wrote to read.It was a letter Shimei should himselfConvey to Felix governor; it ran:"Who brings this is a rascal, as I judge;He comes to accuse the Jewish prisoner Paul.Detain him, if thee please, to see the end;The end should be perhaps a cross forhim!"Wincing, the miscreant read; he, reading, feltDraw, from Rome's hand, the coil about his neck.Choking for speech, he, ere he found it, heardThe chiliarch say, with voice hard like a flint:"Thou hast thine errand; tarry not, but go.Nay, bide a moment; let the youngster seeWhat message I have given thee to bear;Then, if so chance thou lose it on the way,He can supply thy lack of carefulness!"
His air that of the miser who, compelled,Gives up gold hoarded, like his own heart's blood,Shimei, with griping pangs, in sick recoilOf grudging overmastered to submit,Yielded, as if he were withholding it,The hateful letter into Stephen's hand.Stephen, as one not daring otherwise,Deigned a reluctant look, that, seeking not,Yet seized, the sense of that which Shimei showed;Softened, he gave the parchment back to him.
Prodded with such oblique sarcastic spurTo heed of sinister commission such,Shimei withdrew, a miserable man.
The chiliarch then to Stephen—who, at oncePity of Shimei's utter wretchedness,Shame of his utter abjectness, conceived—Said, with changed tone: "My lad, I think thee true;That miscreant vexed me into petulance.Thou hast not altogether missed thy markIn coming hither now, although I thusSeem to let Shimei for the present slip.Follow him, if thou wilt, to Cæsarea.With letter of Bellerophon in charge,He carries his own sentence thither hence;Watch it—if slow in execution, sure!"
Sobered by triumph, and not triumphing,Made pensive rather, Stephen went away.
Forth from the hour when Shimei, so dismissed,Shrank out of presence at AntoniaCollapsed in spirit as in mien and port,He to the end was seen an altered man.Dejected, absent, like a criminalConvicted of his crime, sentenced to die,Though day of death unfixed, imprisoned not,Nay, moving, as if free, about the world,To view not different from his fellow-men,Yet with a sense forever haunting himOf doom uncertainly suspended stillAbove him, that at any moment mightIn avalanche descend upon his head—So he lived joyless, the elastic springBroken that buoyed him to his wickedness.But loth he had to Cæsarea gone,Where, with wry looks and deprecation vain,He gave the letter to the governor;Had he, to ease his case, dared fail the trust,The failure would have failed his case to ease,Nay, rather, would have harder made his case,Since Stephen could report what he did not,And could besides report his negligence.But Shimei dared not fail; he knew offence,Added, of disobedience, would but drawSpeedier the dreaded danger ruining down.
Joy is to some a spring of energy,Which failing, all their force for action fails—They having in themselves no virtue proofAgainst the palsying touch ill fortune brings;Of such was Shimei. In his broken state,His measures he took feebly, without hope.The wish—which with the expectation joinedWould have made hope—yea, even the very wish,That life and strength of hope, was well-nigh deadIn him; for he no longer now desiredThe thing he wrought for still, under constraintOf habit, and that strange necessityWhich sense of many eyes upon him fixedTo watch him working the familiar wontOf Shimei, bred within this wretched man,Forcing him like a fate.
Fit tool he foundIn one Tertullus—hireling Roman tongue,Or function mere, not organ—who, for price,Spoke customary things accusing PaulTo Felix, for the Jews; these joined their voiceIn sanction of the truth of what he said.But Paul denying their base charges all,Denying and defying to the proof,The governor postponed them for a time.Paul he remanded into custody,But bade with courteous ways distinguish him;Whereof the secret cause was, not a senseIn Felix of the righteousness of Paul,With therefore sweet magnanimous desireTo grace him what in loyalty he could—Of no such height was Felix capable—The cause none other was than Shimei;Who Paul however served not, but himself.
For Shimei dreaded what he seemed to seek,The sentence "Guilty," at the judgment-barOf Felix on this prisoner Paul pronounced;Dreaded it, lest appeal therefrom be claimedBy Paul to the imperial ear at Rome.He himself, Shimei, then might be compelledTo go likewise the same unwelcome way,Though witness and accuser only named,Yet labelled target for suspicious eyes,Where eyes suspicious oft portended doom.So he to Felix—less with words than signs,Mysterious looks and reticences deep,As of a man who could, if but he would,And were it wise, tell much that, left untold,Might well be guessed from things kept back, yet thus,And thus, and thus (in Shimei's pantomime)Winked with the eye and with the shoulder shrugged—Hint signalled that there hid a gold mine here,For who, with power like his, conjoined the skillTo make it yield its treasure to demand;This Paul had wealthy friends who gladly wouldBuy at large price indulgences for him.Let Felix hold out hopes, deferring still,Suffer his friends to come and visit Paul,Give hearings to his case, but naught decide,Weary him out, and them, with long delays—Till a realm's ransom woo his clutch at last.
Now Shimei thus consummately contrived;For Felix was a mercenary soul,Who governed in the spirit of a slave.He, therefore, doubting not that Shimei(Confessed the player of a double part,Pander to him, accuser for the Jews)Was all the rascal that the chiliarch guessed,Yet deemed he saw his profit in the man.He could use Shimei to his own behoof,In winning what he coveted from Paul;Meantime remitting not his hold on himFor final expiation of his crimes.The two, well fitted to each other, thusPlayed each his several sordid game with each,And neither by the other was deceived,Both equally incapable of trust,As equally unworthy to be trusted—Until, two years accomplished, Felix fellFrom power at Cæsarea; when, his greedLong disappointed of its glut of gainFrom Paul, he left him there in prison. He hopedThe dreaded accusation of the JewsFor his abuse of power, surpassing bound,Might less fierce follow him to Rome, should he,By that injustice added, in their eyesHis thousands of injustices atone.
Moreover Felix hated Paul, as hatesThe upbraided ever his upbraider, when,The conscience yielding, yet the will withstands.For, during the imprisonment of Paul,And that prolonged delay of trial dueHim, this base freedman—basely raised to beA ruler—as a pleasure to his wife,Devised a feast of eloquence for her.She was a Jewess, beautiful as vile,And as in beauty brilliant, so in wit;She would enjoy it, like a spectacle,To sit, in emulated state, a queenBeside her husband in his judgment-hall,And there, at ease reclined, her lord's delight,In her resplendent and voluptuous bloom,Disport herself at leisure, eye and earTasting their satisfaction to the full,To see and hear her famous countrymanExpound his doctrine and defend his cause.Not often, in his rude Judæan seatOf government in banishment, could heProffer the stately partner of his throneAn equal hope of entertainment rare.
So, royal in their pomp of progress, came,One day, the lustful Felix with his bride,Adulterous Drusilla, guilty pair!And, on his throne of judgment seating him,Bade Paul before them, in his prisoner's chain,To burn the splendors of his oratoryIn pleading for the faith of Jesus Christ—Fresh pastime to the cloyed and jaded senseFor pleasure those voluptuaries brought!Uncalculated thrills, not of delight,That lawless Roman ruler had purveyedHimself, to chase each other in their chillProcession through the currents of his blood,And, shuddering, shoot along his nerves, and freezeHis marrow!—conscience in him her last signMaking perhaps that day.
But will he heed?Or will the terrors of the world to comeVainly appal him with the eternal fear?
Paul discourses solemnly before Felix and his queen Drusilla, treating the topics of righteousness, self-control, and impending judgment. The effect is to make Felix show visible signs of discomposure on his judgment-seat. Drusilla, apprehensive of consequences disastrous to herself from her wicked husband's awakened remorse and fear, invokes the intervention of Simon, that Cyprian Jewish sorcerer who had at first been instrumental in bringing the guilty pair together. Simon plays upon the superstition of Felix with his pretended magic arts.
PAUL BEFORE FELIX.
The power of the Most High, descending, fellOn Paul, as, led of soldiers, he came in,Bound, at the mercy of the governor,And took his station in that presence proud.At once, but without observation, changedBecame the parts of Felix and of Paul.Paul, from a prisoner of Felix, nowTo Felix was as captor and as judge;And Felix was as prisoner, bound, to Paul.Paul his right hand in manacles stretched forth,As if it were a scepter that he swayed,And said: "Most excellent lord Felix, hear,And thou, Drusilla, unto Felix spouse!Obedient, at thy bidding, I am comeTo make thee know the faith in Jesus Christ,And wherefore I obey it, and proclaim.Know, then, that Jesus, He of Nazareth,The Crucified of Calvary, is Christ,The Christ of that Jehovah God Most HighWho by His word created heaven and earth,And Him anointed to be Lord of all.God was incarnate in Him here on earth,To reconcile the world unto Himself;And I beseech men—I, ambassadorFrom Him, as if the Lord God did by meBeseech—beseeching them, 'Be reconciledTo God.'"For all men everywhere are foundBy wicked works God's enemies; on all,God's wrath, weight insupportable, abides;A message this, that down from heaven He brought,That Christ of God, that Savior of the world.But His atonement lifts the load of wrath,Which down toward hell the sinking spirit weighed,Lifts, nay, transmutes it to a might of love,Which bears the spirit soaring up to heaven.'Believe in Jesus, and be reconciledTo God'; that is the gospel which I preach.Obey my gospel, and be saved—rebel,And pray the mountains to fall down on theeTo hide thee from the wrath of God, and hideThee from the wrath, more dreadful, of the Lamb.For Lamb was Jesus, when on CalvaryIn sacrifice for sin He died; but when,Resurgent from the tomb, above all heightInto the heaven of heavens He rose, and satOn the right hand of glory and of powerWith God, then the Lamb slain from far beforeThe world was founded, by His blood our guiltTo purge, as capable of wrath became,As He before was capable of love.He burns against unrighteousness, in flameWhich, kindling on the wicked, them devours.There is no quenching of that fearful flame,As ending none is there of what it burns;The victim lives immortally, to feedThe immortal hunger of that vengeful flame.It swifter than the living lightning flies,To fasten on its victim in his flight;No refuge is there in the universeFor fugitive from it. Thou, Felix, knowestNo hider can elude the ranging eyes,No runner can outrun the wingéd feet,No striver can resist the griping hands,That to the emperor of the world belong;Whom Cæsar wishes, Cæsar has for prey."Paul fixed his gaze point-blank on Felix whileThese things he said, not as with personal aim—Which might have been resented, being such,Resented, and thereby avoided quite—Rather as if, through body, he beheldHis hearer's soul, and set it with his eyesFar forward into the eternal world,And there saw the fierce flame he spoke of, fastAdhering or inhering, burn that soul,With burning unescapable by flightOr refuge through the universe of God.Paul's vision was so vivid that his eyesImprinted what he saw upon the soulOf Felix, that almost he saw it too.He stared and listened, with that thought intenseWherewith sometimes the overmastering mindWill blind the eyesight and the hearing blur.A sense of insecurity in power,Bred in him by his consciousness of crime,With dread, too, of the moment, then perhapsAlready nigh! when that omnipotence,That omnipresence, that omniscience, Rome's,Might besethim, to cut him off from hope—This feeling blindly wrought the while beneath,Like struggling earthquake, to unsettle him;Thus weakened, half unconsciously, his willFell childlike-helpless in the power of Paul.Now fear hath torment, and to Felix, preyOf fear with torment, Paul still added fear;Perhaps his fear intolerable grownMight save the sufferer from the thing he feared!Paul further said: "O Felix, Cæsar's swayOver this world, inevitable thus,Subduing all, is yet but image paleOf the supreme dominion absoluteWhich to Christ Jesus in the heaven belongs.The captives of the emperor need but waitPatient a while and sure release arrives;Since death at least, to all, or soon or late,Comes, one escape at last from Cæsar's power,Who owns no empire in that world beyond.But of that world beyond, no end, no bound,Whither we all must flee in fleeing hence,Still the Lord Christ abides eternal King;Death is but door to realm of His more wide.Here, the sheathed sword of His avenging ireWill sometimes touch, undrawn, with blunted edge,The wincing conscience of the wicked manThat knows himself a criminal unjudged.Those touches are the mercy of the LordThat would betimes the guilty soul alarm;Those pains of conscience are the smouldering firesWhich, quenched not now in sin-atoning blood,Will, blown to fury, by and by burst forth,And, fuelled of the substance of the soul,That cannot moult its immortality,One inextinguishable vengeance burn."'Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings, be yeInstructed, judges of the earth;' so GodCries in our Scriptures in the ears of men.'Kiss ye the Son,' He says, 'in homage kissThe Son of Mine anointing, Christ the Lord,Kiss Him lest He be angry, and His wrathReady to be enkindled you devour.But in the living scriptures of the soulItself, the holy word of God in man,The selfsame admonition beats and burns—If men would read it and would understand!The raging of desire not satisfied,The sickness of the surfeit of desire,The ravages of passion uncontrolled,And waste of being, by itself consumed,To bury or deface what else were fair—Like lava spouted from the crater's mouthOf the volcano burning its own bowelsTo belch them torrent over fertile fields—These things, O Felix, in the conscious heart,Are muffled footfalls of oncoming doom."Peculiar commination seemed to flame,Volcanic, in Paul's manner as he spoke.One might have felt the figure prophecy—For some fulfilment in this present worldImpending to be symbol of his thought—His likening of the self-consuming soul,Disgorging desolation round about,To a volcano its own entrails burning,And in eruption pouring them abroad;So real, so living, so in imminent act,Paul's speaking made his fiery simile.Drusilla, when, long after, with her sonAgrippa, born to Felix, overwhelmedIn that destruction from VesuviusWhich under ashen rain and lava floodPompeii rolled with Herculaneum,Like Sodom and Gomorrah whelmed again!—Drusilla then, despairing, for one fierceFleet instant—instant endless, though so fleet—Saw, as from picture branded on her brain,Heard, as from echo hoarded in its cells,The very image of the speaker's form,His posture, gesture, features in their play,These, and the tones, reliving, of the voiceWherewith, in Cæsarea judgment-hall,He fulmined, yea, as if this self-same wo!But Paul, no pause, immitigably said:"Belshazzar, Babylonian king of old,Once in a season of high festivalHeld in his palace with a thousand lords,Saw visionary fingers of a handCome out upon the palace walls and write.Then that king's countenance was changed in him,In answer to the trouble of his thoughts;The very jointings of his loins were loosed,And his knees, shaken, on each other smote.In language that he did not understand,But prophet Daniel told the sense to him,Belshazzar had his own swift ruin read.Thus, O lord Felix, in our hours of feast,Oft,MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,Dread warning to us that the end is come,That we have been full proved and wanting found,That now our vantage must another's be—Appalling words of final doom from God,In lurid letters live along the wallsOf the soul's pleasure-house—for who will heed!Remorses, doubts, recoils, forebodings, fears,And fearful lookings for of judgment nigh,Previsions flashed on the prophetic soulRefusing to be hooded not to see—These are handwritings on the wall from God;They, syllabling the sentence of His ire,SpellMENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,For pleasure-lovers lost in lust and pride.Well for Belshazzar, if betimes he heed!"Had Felix been alone, deep in the dark,And a wide waste of solitude around,A comfort it had seemed to him to looseOne mighty agitation of his frameAnd shiver his blood-curdling terror off;Or, in one wanton, wild, voluptuous cry,Shriek it into the startled universe.But, seated there upon his throne of power,Drusilla by his side regarding him,To tremble, like a culprit being judged,Before a culprit waiting judgment! He,With last resistant agony of will,Kept moveless his blanched lips, and on his seatSat stricken upright, and so stared at Paul.There Paul stood tranquil, choosing thunderbolts,And this the thunderbolt that last he launched:"Hearken, O Felix. In the clouds of heaven,Attended by the angels of His might,The Lord Christ Jesus I behold descend.The trumpet of the resurrection sounds,And sea and land give up their wakened dead;These all to judgment hasten at His call:The books are opened and the witness found;All the least thoughts of men, with all their wordsAnd deeds, all their dumb motions of desire,Their purposes, and their endeavors all,Are written in the record of those books.They blaze out in the light of that great day.Like lightning, fixed from fleeting, on the sky;Deem not one guilty can his guilt conceal.A parting of the evil and the good;The good at His right hand He bids sit down,The awful Judge, omnipotent as just;The evil, frowning, bids from Him depart.Swift, them departing—who would not know God,And not obey the gospel of His Son—He, taking vengeance, follows in their flightWith flaming fire and dreadful punishment,Destruction everlasting from His face,From the Lord's face, and glory of His power!"The shudder that had slept uneasy sleepWithin the breast of Felix lulling it,Woke startled at these minatory wordsSpoken as with the voice of God by Paul.That couchant shudder from its ambush broke,And openly ran wantoning over allThe members of the terror-stricken man.But the cry clamoring in him for escape,To ease the anguish of his mortal fear,Felix found strength to modulate to this,In forced tones uttered, and with failing breath:"Go thy way this time, Paul; at season fitHereafter I will call for thee again."The soldier duly led his prisoner out,And Felix was full easily rid of Paul;Of Paul, but of Paul's haunting presence notThe image of that orator in chains,The solemn echo of the words he spoke,Swam before Felix, sounded in his ears,So real, the real world round him seemed less real.Drusilla, to her discomposure, foundHer husband strangely alien from his spouse;The blandishments so potent with him lateLost on an absent or repellent mind.The awe of Felix under Paul's discourseShe had remarked with unconcerned surprise.She now recalled it with a doubt, a fear.The jealous thought woke in her: 'If my lordShould, overwrought in conscience, cast me off!What byword and what hissing then were I,Stranded and branded an adulteress!I, who the scion of a kingly house,Haughty Antiochus Epiphanes,Haughtily spurned as suitor for my hand,Because he would not for my sake be Jew;Who wedded then Azizus, eastern king,Willing to win me at the price I fixed;Who next with scandal parted from his bed,To snatch this dazzle of a Roman spouse—Ito be now by him flung to the dogs!All at the beck of an apostate Jew,Arraigned a culprit at his judgment-bar!Drusilla, rouse thee, say, It must not be!Drusilla, arm thee, swear, It shall not be!'She summoned straight that Cyprian sorcerer whoHad played the pander's part between herselfAnd Felix, when they twain at first were broughtIn guilt together. "Simon, know," she said,"I with cause hate this Jewish prisoner Paul.He, insolence intolerable, is fainTo come between my Roman lord and me.Withstand him, and undo his hateful spell.""His hateful spell, O stately queen, my liege,"Said Simon, "I far rather would assayUnbinding from thy spouse's soul enthralled,Than him withstand, the binder of that spell,Meeting him face to face. At Paphos once,Of Cyprus, Elymas, a master mindIn magic—at the court proconsularOf Sergius Paulus, regent of the isle,Wielding great power—withstood this self-same Paul.But Paul denounced a curse deipotentAgainst him, and forthwith upon his eyesA mist fell and a darkness, that he walkedWandering in quest of one to lead him, lateRedoubtable magician, by the hand.This conjuration on the conjurer,Himself proconsul Sergius Paulus saw,And, overpowered with wonder and with fear,Roman and governor as he was, becameFast docile dupe and devotee to Paul."Perhaps indeed there was a cause for thisOlder in date than such a feat of Paul's.Long years before, when Paul and he were young,By chance they fared together on the wayDamascus-ward out of Jerusalem,When, nigh Damascus, of a sudden, PaulOn Sergius tried a novel magic trick.In broad noon, with unclouded sun ablazeAbove him, burning all that tract of sand,He flashed a sheen of mimic lightning forth,With stage effect of thunder overheadMuttering words. Thereon as dead fell Paul,Yet to that unintelligible voiceFrom heaven intelligible answer made,Pretending dialogue with some unseenHigh dweller in the upper air, with whomColluding, he thenceforth his spells of powerMight surer, deadlier, fling on whom he would.Sergius was then too full of youth to yield;The lusty blood in him fought off the spell;But somewhat wrought upon, no less, was he,And secretly, in mind and will, preparedTo fall in weaker age a prey to Paul.A potent master Paul is in his kind,Owning some secret from us others hid,That makes our vaunts against him void and vain.I would not needlessly his curse provokeBy too close quarters with him front to front.His spell on Felix I may hope to solve,Let me but have thy husband by himself,In privileged audience safe apart from Paul;I will see Felix, but Paul let me shun."So Simon to his moody master went,And, well dispensing with preamble, said:"What will mine excellent lord Felix pleaseCommand the service of his servant in?""Unbidden thou art present," Felix frowned."So bidden I retire," the mage replied."Nay, tarry," with quick wanton veer of whim,Said Felix, "tarry and declare to me,If with exertion of thy skill thou canst,What is it that this hour perturbs my thought?Answer me that, pretender to be wise,Or own thy weird pretensions nothing worth.No paltering, no evasion, doubling noneIn ambiguity like oracle,But instant, honest, simple, true reply;Else, I have done with all thy trumpery tricks,Haply, too, with some certain fruits thereofThat thee buy little thanks, as me small joy.""My master pleases to make hard demand,In couple with condition hard, to-day,"The sorcerer, with dissembled pleasure, said.Simon full ready felt to meet his test;For, in an antechamber to the hallOf judgment, he, with Shimei too, had lurked,And, overhearing Paul's denouncement, markedThe trepidation of the judge's mien."Lord Felix suffers from an evil spellCast on him by a wicked conjurer;"So, with deep calculation of effect,The sorcerer to the sovereign firmly said."A hit—perhaps," said Felix, some reliefOf tension to his conscience-crowded mindWelcoming already in the hint conveyed;"Repeat to me," he added, keen to hear,"Repeat to me the phrasing of the spell;That I may know it not a groping guess,But certain knowledge, what thou thus hast said."That challenge flung to Simon's hand the clueHe needed for his guidance in the maze.He sees the Roman's superstitious mindIn grapple with imaginative aweInfused by recollection of those wordsBarbaric—of comminatory sound,Though understood not, therefore dreaded more—Which Paul, two several times, in his discourse,Had solemnly recited in his ear."The spell," he said, "O Felix, that enthrallsThee was of three Chaldæan words composed;But one word was repeated, making four.I dare not utter those dire syllablesIn the fixed order which creates the spell.My wish is to undo, and not to bind."Felix was frightened, like a little childTold ghostly stories in the dead of night;He watched and waited, with set eye intense.The conjurer, standing in struck attitude,Made with his voice an inarticulate signIntoned in tone to thrill the listening blood.Thereon, in silence, through the opening door,With gliding motion, a familiar stoleInto the chamber, which now more and more,To Felix's impressionable fears,As if a vestibule to Hades was.That noiseless minister to Simon gaveInto his master's hand a rod prepared."Hearken, lord Felix," low the conjurer said,"Hearken and heed. Well needs it thou, with me,Fail now in nothing through a mind remiss.Hear thou aright, while I aright reverseThe order of the phrasing of that spell.Beware thou think it even no otherwiseThan as I give it, weighing word and word.I turn the sentence end for end about,UPHARSIN, TEKEL, MENE, MENE, say;All is not done, still keep thy mind intent,And, with thine eyes now, as erst with thine ears,Watch what I do, and let thy will consent."Therewith his wizard wand he waved in air,As who wrote viewless words upon the wind.A hollow reed the wand he wielded was,With secret seed asleep of fire enclosed.This, at the end that in his hand he held;Powder of sulphur at the other endWas hidden in the hollow of the reed.The sulphur and the fire, unconscious eachOf other, had, though neighboring, since apart,Slept; for the sorcerer's minion brought the rod,As first the sorcerer held it, levelled true.But with the motion of the magian's hand,The dipping virgule sent the ember downThe polished inner of its chamber-walls,And breath let in to blow it living red,Until it touched the sulphur at the tip.Issue of fume there followed, edged with flame,And wafting pungent odor from the vent,Which, woven in circlet and in crescent, seemedTo knit a melting legend on the air."So vanish and be not, thou hateful spell,And leave this late so vexéd spirit free!"With mutter of which words, the sorcerer turnedTo Felix, and thus farther spoke: "Breathe thou,Lord Felix, from that bond emancipate.Yet, that thou fall not unawares againBeneath its power, use well a countercharmI give thee, which, both night and day, wear thouA prophylactic to thy menaced mind.Gold—let the thought, the motive, the desire,The purpose, and the fancy, and the dream,Not leave thee nor forsake thee till thou die.The sight, the sound, the touch, the clutch, of goldIs sovereign absolution to a soulBeset like thine with fear of things to beBeyond the limit of this mortal state;But, failing that, the thought itself will serve.The thought at least must never absent be,If thou wouldst live a freeman in thy mind."'Freedman,' he would have said, but did not dare;He had dared much already in his word,'Freeman,' so nigh overt allusion glancedAt the opprobrious quality of slave,Out of which Felix sprang to be a king.To that, contempt and hatred of a lordServed but from hard self-interest and from fearHad irresistibly pressed Simon onBeyond the bound of calculated speech.Therewith, and waiting not dismissal, both,The sorcerer and his minion, silentlySlid out of presence, and left Felix thereTo rally as he might to his true self.But, not too trustful to his sorcery,Simon thought well to follow and confirmThe influence won on Felix through his art,With worldly wisdom suited to his end.He bade Drusilla open all accessEver for Shimei to her husband's ear,And even from her own treasure help him plyFelix's avid mind with hope of gold—Assured to him through earnest oft in hand—An ample guerdon in due time to comeFrom Paul's rich friends to buy release for Paul.At Cæsarea, in the judgment hallThat day, a solemn crisis of his life,To Felix, he not knowing, there had passed.Successfully, with sad success! he hadResisted conscience in her last attempt,Her last and greatest, to alarm a soulSufficiently to save it from itself.At length, with the still process of the daysDulled, and besides with opiate medicines drugged,That conscience, so resisted, sank asleep,Sank dead asleep in Felix, to awakeNever again. He indeed sent for PaulAfterward oft, and talked with him at large;But always only in that sordid hope—Blown to fresh flame with seasonable breath,That never failed, from Shimei, prompt in watchTo play on his cupidity—the hopeOf princely ransom from his prisoner won.Such hope, so kept alive, led this bad man—Although he hated Paul for shaking himTo terror, and to open shameful showOf terror, in his very pitch of pride—To palter with his prisoner, month by month,Until the end came of his long misrule.Then, hope deferred, defeated hope at last,Let loose the hatred that in leash had lainOf avarice, in the kennel of that breast,And Felix found a sullen feast for itIn leaving Paul at Cæsarea bound.
The power of the Most High, descending, fellOn Paul, as, led of soldiers, he came in,Bound, at the mercy of the governor,And took his station in that presence proud.At once, but without observation, changedBecame the parts of Felix and of Paul.Paul, from a prisoner of Felix, nowTo Felix was as captor and as judge;And Felix was as prisoner, bound, to Paul.
Paul his right hand in manacles stretched forth,As if it were a scepter that he swayed,And said: "Most excellent lord Felix, hear,And thou, Drusilla, unto Felix spouse!Obedient, at thy bidding, I am comeTo make thee know the faith in Jesus Christ,And wherefore I obey it, and proclaim.Know, then, that Jesus, He of Nazareth,The Crucified of Calvary, is Christ,The Christ of that Jehovah God Most HighWho by His word created heaven and earth,And Him anointed to be Lord of all.God was incarnate in Him here on earth,To reconcile the world unto Himself;And I beseech men—I, ambassadorFrom Him, as if the Lord God did by meBeseech—beseeching them, 'Be reconciledTo God.'
"For all men everywhere are foundBy wicked works God's enemies; on all,God's wrath, weight insupportable, abides;A message this, that down from heaven He brought,That Christ of God, that Savior of the world.But His atonement lifts the load of wrath,Which down toward hell the sinking spirit weighed,Lifts, nay, transmutes it to a might of love,Which bears the spirit soaring up to heaven.'Believe in Jesus, and be reconciledTo God'; that is the gospel which I preach.Obey my gospel, and be saved—rebel,And pray the mountains to fall down on theeTo hide thee from the wrath of God, and hideThee from the wrath, more dreadful, of the Lamb.For Lamb was Jesus, when on CalvaryIn sacrifice for sin He died; but when,Resurgent from the tomb, above all heightInto the heaven of heavens He rose, and satOn the right hand of glory and of powerWith God, then the Lamb slain from far beforeThe world was founded, by His blood our guiltTo purge, as capable of wrath became,As He before was capable of love.He burns against unrighteousness, in flameWhich, kindling on the wicked, them devours.There is no quenching of that fearful flame,As ending none is there of what it burns;The victim lives immortally, to feedThe immortal hunger of that vengeful flame.It swifter than the living lightning flies,To fasten on its victim in his flight;No refuge is there in the universeFor fugitive from it. Thou, Felix, knowestNo hider can elude the ranging eyes,No runner can outrun the wingéd feet,No striver can resist the griping hands,That to the emperor of the world belong;Whom Cæsar wishes, Cæsar has for prey."
Paul fixed his gaze point-blank on Felix whileThese things he said, not as with personal aim—Which might have been resented, being such,Resented, and thereby avoided quite—Rather as if, through body, he beheldHis hearer's soul, and set it with his eyesFar forward into the eternal world,And there saw the fierce flame he spoke of, fastAdhering or inhering, burn that soul,With burning unescapable by flightOr refuge through the universe of God.Paul's vision was so vivid that his eyesImprinted what he saw upon the soulOf Felix, that almost he saw it too.He stared and listened, with that thought intenseWherewith sometimes the overmastering mindWill blind the eyesight and the hearing blur.
A sense of insecurity in power,Bred in him by his consciousness of crime,With dread, too, of the moment, then perhapsAlready nigh! when that omnipotence,That omnipresence, that omniscience, Rome's,Might besethim, to cut him off from hope—This feeling blindly wrought the while beneath,Like struggling earthquake, to unsettle him;Thus weakened, half unconsciously, his willFell childlike-helpless in the power of Paul.Now fear hath torment, and to Felix, preyOf fear with torment, Paul still added fear;Perhaps his fear intolerable grownMight save the sufferer from the thing he feared!Paul further said: "O Felix, Cæsar's swayOver this world, inevitable thus,Subduing all, is yet but image paleOf the supreme dominion absoluteWhich to Christ Jesus in the heaven belongs.The captives of the emperor need but waitPatient a while and sure release arrives;Since death at least, to all, or soon or late,Comes, one escape at last from Cæsar's power,Who owns no empire in that world beyond.But of that world beyond, no end, no bound,Whither we all must flee in fleeing hence,Still the Lord Christ abides eternal King;Death is but door to realm of His more wide.Here, the sheathed sword of His avenging ireWill sometimes touch, undrawn, with blunted edge,The wincing conscience of the wicked manThat knows himself a criminal unjudged.Those touches are the mercy of the LordThat would betimes the guilty soul alarm;Those pains of conscience are the smouldering firesWhich, quenched not now in sin-atoning blood,Will, blown to fury, by and by burst forth,And, fuelled of the substance of the soul,That cannot moult its immortality,One inextinguishable vengeance burn.
"'Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings, be yeInstructed, judges of the earth;' so GodCries in our Scriptures in the ears of men.'Kiss ye the Son,' He says, 'in homage kissThe Son of Mine anointing, Christ the Lord,Kiss Him lest He be angry, and His wrathReady to be enkindled you devour.But in the living scriptures of the soulItself, the holy word of God in man,The selfsame admonition beats and burns—If men would read it and would understand!The raging of desire not satisfied,The sickness of the surfeit of desire,The ravages of passion uncontrolled,And waste of being, by itself consumed,To bury or deface what else were fair—Like lava spouted from the crater's mouthOf the volcano burning its own bowelsTo belch them torrent over fertile fields—These things, O Felix, in the conscious heart,Are muffled footfalls of oncoming doom."
Peculiar commination seemed to flame,Volcanic, in Paul's manner as he spoke.One might have felt the figure prophecy—For some fulfilment in this present worldImpending to be symbol of his thought—His likening of the self-consuming soul,Disgorging desolation round about,To a volcano its own entrails burning,And in eruption pouring them abroad;So real, so living, so in imminent act,Paul's speaking made his fiery simile.Drusilla, when, long after, with her sonAgrippa, born to Felix, overwhelmedIn that destruction from VesuviusWhich under ashen rain and lava floodPompeii rolled with Herculaneum,Like Sodom and Gomorrah whelmed again!—Drusilla then, despairing, for one fierceFleet instant—instant endless, though so fleet—Saw, as from picture branded on her brain,Heard, as from echo hoarded in its cells,The very image of the speaker's form,His posture, gesture, features in their play,These, and the tones, reliving, of the voiceWherewith, in Cæsarea judgment-hall,He fulmined, yea, as if this self-same wo!
But Paul, no pause, immitigably said:"Belshazzar, Babylonian king of old,Once in a season of high festivalHeld in his palace with a thousand lords,Saw visionary fingers of a handCome out upon the palace walls and write.Then that king's countenance was changed in him,In answer to the trouble of his thoughts;The very jointings of his loins were loosed,And his knees, shaken, on each other smote.In language that he did not understand,But prophet Daniel told the sense to him,Belshazzar had his own swift ruin read.Thus, O lord Felix, in our hours of feast,Oft,MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,Dread warning to us that the end is come,That we have been full proved and wanting found,That now our vantage must another's be—Appalling words of final doom from God,In lurid letters live along the wallsOf the soul's pleasure-house—for who will heed!Remorses, doubts, recoils, forebodings, fears,And fearful lookings for of judgment nigh,Previsions flashed on the prophetic soulRefusing to be hooded not to see—These are handwritings on the wall from God;They, syllabling the sentence of His ire,SpellMENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,For pleasure-lovers lost in lust and pride.Well for Belshazzar, if betimes he heed!"
Had Felix been alone, deep in the dark,And a wide waste of solitude around,A comfort it had seemed to him to looseOne mighty agitation of his frameAnd shiver his blood-curdling terror off;Or, in one wanton, wild, voluptuous cry,Shriek it into the startled universe.But, seated there upon his throne of power,Drusilla by his side regarding him,To tremble, like a culprit being judged,Before a culprit waiting judgment! He,With last resistant agony of will,Kept moveless his blanched lips, and on his seatSat stricken upright, and so stared at Paul.
There Paul stood tranquil, choosing thunderbolts,And this the thunderbolt that last he launched:"Hearken, O Felix. In the clouds of heaven,Attended by the angels of His might,The Lord Christ Jesus I behold descend.The trumpet of the resurrection sounds,And sea and land give up their wakened dead;These all to judgment hasten at His call:The books are opened and the witness found;All the least thoughts of men, with all their wordsAnd deeds, all their dumb motions of desire,Their purposes, and their endeavors all,Are written in the record of those books.They blaze out in the light of that great day.Like lightning, fixed from fleeting, on the sky;Deem not one guilty can his guilt conceal.A parting of the evil and the good;The good at His right hand He bids sit down,The awful Judge, omnipotent as just;The evil, frowning, bids from Him depart.Swift, them departing—who would not know God,And not obey the gospel of His Son—He, taking vengeance, follows in their flightWith flaming fire and dreadful punishment,Destruction everlasting from His face,From the Lord's face, and glory of His power!"
The shudder that had slept uneasy sleepWithin the breast of Felix lulling it,Woke startled at these minatory wordsSpoken as with the voice of God by Paul.That couchant shudder from its ambush broke,And openly ran wantoning over allThe members of the terror-stricken man.But the cry clamoring in him for escape,To ease the anguish of his mortal fear,Felix found strength to modulate to this,In forced tones uttered, and with failing breath:"Go thy way this time, Paul; at season fitHereafter I will call for thee again."
The soldier duly led his prisoner out,And Felix was full easily rid of Paul;Of Paul, but of Paul's haunting presence notThe image of that orator in chains,The solemn echo of the words he spoke,Swam before Felix, sounded in his ears,So real, the real world round him seemed less real.
Drusilla, to her discomposure, foundHer husband strangely alien from his spouse;The blandishments so potent with him lateLost on an absent or repellent mind.The awe of Felix under Paul's discourseShe had remarked with unconcerned surprise.She now recalled it with a doubt, a fear.The jealous thought woke in her: 'If my lordShould, overwrought in conscience, cast me off!What byword and what hissing then were I,Stranded and branded an adulteress!I, who the scion of a kingly house,Haughty Antiochus Epiphanes,Haughtily spurned as suitor for my hand,Because he would not for my sake be Jew;Who wedded then Azizus, eastern king,Willing to win me at the price I fixed;Who next with scandal parted from his bed,To snatch this dazzle of a Roman spouse—Ito be now by him flung to the dogs!All at the beck of an apostate Jew,Arraigned a culprit at his judgment-bar!Drusilla, rouse thee, say, It must not be!Drusilla, arm thee, swear, It shall not be!'
She summoned straight that Cyprian sorcerer whoHad played the pander's part between herselfAnd Felix, when they twain at first were broughtIn guilt together. "Simon, know," she said,"I with cause hate this Jewish prisoner Paul.He, insolence intolerable, is fainTo come between my Roman lord and me.Withstand him, and undo his hateful spell."
"His hateful spell, O stately queen, my liege,"Said Simon, "I far rather would assayUnbinding from thy spouse's soul enthralled,Than him withstand, the binder of that spell,Meeting him face to face. At Paphos once,Of Cyprus, Elymas, a master mindIn magic—at the court proconsularOf Sergius Paulus, regent of the isle,Wielding great power—withstood this self-same Paul.But Paul denounced a curse deipotentAgainst him, and forthwith upon his eyesA mist fell and a darkness, that he walkedWandering in quest of one to lead him, lateRedoubtable magician, by the hand.This conjuration on the conjurer,Himself proconsul Sergius Paulus saw,And, overpowered with wonder and with fear,Roman and governor as he was, becameFast docile dupe and devotee to Paul.
"Perhaps indeed there was a cause for thisOlder in date than such a feat of Paul's.Long years before, when Paul and he were young,By chance they fared together on the wayDamascus-ward out of Jerusalem,When, nigh Damascus, of a sudden, PaulOn Sergius tried a novel magic trick.In broad noon, with unclouded sun ablazeAbove him, burning all that tract of sand,He flashed a sheen of mimic lightning forth,With stage effect of thunder overheadMuttering words. Thereon as dead fell Paul,Yet to that unintelligible voiceFrom heaven intelligible answer made,Pretending dialogue with some unseenHigh dweller in the upper air, with whomColluding, he thenceforth his spells of powerMight surer, deadlier, fling on whom he would.Sergius was then too full of youth to yield;The lusty blood in him fought off the spell;But somewhat wrought upon, no less, was he,And secretly, in mind and will, preparedTo fall in weaker age a prey to Paul.A potent master Paul is in his kind,Owning some secret from us others hid,That makes our vaunts against him void and vain.I would not needlessly his curse provokeBy too close quarters with him front to front.His spell on Felix I may hope to solve,Let me but have thy husband by himself,In privileged audience safe apart from Paul;I will see Felix, but Paul let me shun."
So Simon to his moody master went,And, well dispensing with preamble, said:"What will mine excellent lord Felix pleaseCommand the service of his servant in?""Unbidden thou art present," Felix frowned."So bidden I retire," the mage replied."Nay, tarry," with quick wanton veer of whim,Said Felix, "tarry and declare to me,If with exertion of thy skill thou canst,What is it that this hour perturbs my thought?Answer me that, pretender to be wise,Or own thy weird pretensions nothing worth.No paltering, no evasion, doubling noneIn ambiguity like oracle,But instant, honest, simple, true reply;Else, I have done with all thy trumpery tricks,Haply, too, with some certain fruits thereofThat thee buy little thanks, as me small joy."
"My master pleases to make hard demand,In couple with condition hard, to-day,"The sorcerer, with dissembled pleasure, said.Simon full ready felt to meet his test;For, in an antechamber to the hallOf judgment, he, with Shimei too, had lurked,And, overhearing Paul's denouncement, markedThe trepidation of the judge's mien."Lord Felix suffers from an evil spellCast on him by a wicked conjurer;"So, with deep calculation of effect,The sorcerer to the sovereign firmly said."A hit—perhaps," said Felix, some reliefOf tension to his conscience-crowded mindWelcoming already in the hint conveyed;"Repeat to me," he added, keen to hear,"Repeat to me the phrasing of the spell;That I may know it not a groping guess,But certain knowledge, what thou thus hast said."
That challenge flung to Simon's hand the clueHe needed for his guidance in the maze.He sees the Roman's superstitious mindIn grapple with imaginative aweInfused by recollection of those wordsBarbaric—of comminatory sound,Though understood not, therefore dreaded more—Which Paul, two several times, in his discourse,Had solemnly recited in his ear."The spell," he said, "O Felix, that enthrallsThee was of three Chaldæan words composed;But one word was repeated, making four.I dare not utter those dire syllablesIn the fixed order which creates the spell.My wish is to undo, and not to bind."
Felix was frightened, like a little childTold ghostly stories in the dead of night;He watched and waited, with set eye intense.The conjurer, standing in struck attitude,Made with his voice an inarticulate signIntoned in tone to thrill the listening blood.Thereon, in silence, through the opening door,With gliding motion, a familiar stoleInto the chamber, which now more and more,To Felix's impressionable fears,As if a vestibule to Hades was.That noiseless minister to Simon gaveInto his master's hand a rod prepared."Hearken, lord Felix," low the conjurer said,"Hearken and heed. Well needs it thou, with me,Fail now in nothing through a mind remiss.Hear thou aright, while I aright reverseThe order of the phrasing of that spell.Beware thou think it even no otherwiseThan as I give it, weighing word and word.I turn the sentence end for end about,UPHARSIN, TEKEL, MENE, MENE, say;All is not done, still keep thy mind intent,And, with thine eyes now, as erst with thine ears,Watch what I do, and let thy will consent."
Therewith his wizard wand he waved in air,As who wrote viewless words upon the wind.A hollow reed the wand he wielded was,With secret seed asleep of fire enclosed.This, at the end that in his hand he held;Powder of sulphur at the other endWas hidden in the hollow of the reed.The sulphur and the fire, unconscious eachOf other, had, though neighboring, since apart,Slept; for the sorcerer's minion brought the rod,As first the sorcerer held it, levelled true.But with the motion of the magian's hand,The dipping virgule sent the ember downThe polished inner of its chamber-walls,And breath let in to blow it living red,Until it touched the sulphur at the tip.Issue of fume there followed, edged with flame,And wafting pungent odor from the vent,Which, woven in circlet and in crescent, seemedTo knit a melting legend on the air."So vanish and be not, thou hateful spell,And leave this late so vexéd spirit free!"With mutter of which words, the sorcerer turnedTo Felix, and thus farther spoke: "Breathe thou,Lord Felix, from that bond emancipate.Yet, that thou fall not unawares againBeneath its power, use well a countercharmI give thee, which, both night and day, wear thouA prophylactic to thy menaced mind.Gold—let the thought, the motive, the desire,The purpose, and the fancy, and the dream,Not leave thee nor forsake thee till thou die.The sight, the sound, the touch, the clutch, of goldIs sovereign absolution to a soulBeset like thine with fear of things to beBeyond the limit of this mortal state;But, failing that, the thought itself will serve.The thought at least must never absent be,If thou wouldst live a freeman in thy mind."
'Freedman,' he would have said, but did not dare;He had dared much already in his word,'Freeman,' so nigh overt allusion glancedAt the opprobrious quality of slave,Out of which Felix sprang to be a king.To that, contempt and hatred of a lordServed but from hard self-interest and from fearHad irresistibly pressed Simon onBeyond the bound of calculated speech.Therewith, and waiting not dismissal, both,The sorcerer and his minion, silentlySlid out of presence, and left Felix thereTo rally as he might to his true self.But, not too trustful to his sorcery,Simon thought well to follow and confirmThe influence won on Felix through his art,With worldly wisdom suited to his end.He bade Drusilla open all accessEver for Shimei to her husband's ear,And even from her own treasure help him plyFelix's avid mind with hope of gold—Assured to him through earnest oft in hand—An ample guerdon in due time to comeFrom Paul's rich friends to buy release for Paul.
At Cæsarea, in the judgment hallThat day, a solemn crisis of his life,To Felix, he not knowing, there had passed.Successfully, with sad success! he hadResisted conscience in her last attempt,Her last and greatest, to alarm a soulSufficiently to save it from itself.At length, with the still process of the daysDulled, and besides with opiate medicines drugged,That conscience, so resisted, sank asleep,Sank dead asleep in Felix, to awakeNever again. He indeed sent for PaulAfterward oft, and talked with him at large;But always only in that sordid hope—Blown to fresh flame with seasonable breath,That never failed, from Shimei, prompt in watchTo play on his cupidity—the hopeOf princely ransom from his prisoner won.
Such hope, so kept alive, led this bad man—Although he hated Paul for shaking himTo terror, and to open shameful showOf terror, in his very pitch of pride—To palter with his prisoner, month by month,Until the end came of his long misrule.Then, hope deferred, defeated hope at last,Let loose the hatred that in leash had lainOf avarice, in the kennel of that breast,And Felix found a sullen feast for itIn leaving Paul at Cæsarea bound.
Paul, in preferred alternative to being judged, as was proposed, by his murderous fellow-countrymen, appeals to Cæsar. He is in consequence embarked on a ship for Rome. With him sail certain kindred and friends of his, young Stephen among them. Fellow-voyagers with him are also Felix and Drusilla, fallen now from power and under cloud at Rome. Shimei and Simon the sorcerer are of the company. The voyage is described, together with some of the notable prospects of the coasts along which the vessel sails. Shimei plots against the life of Paul. His plot is thwarted by young Stephen, and the culprit is thrown into dungeon in the hold under chains.
"TO CÆSAR."